


ti senti perduto

by unincased



Category: Bernice Summerfield (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anti-Alien Racism, Gen, brax thinks he's okay, but he's not, do you ever think about how brax has had three homes and every single one of them gets wrecked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 13:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18074279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unincased/pseuds/unincased
Summary: Irving Braxiatel will not lose himself to these interrogators. But sometimes, pieces of himself slip. (A brief scene set during the Fifth Axis Occupation.)





	ti senti perduto

The princess challenged the prince (the riddles were three, the death was one) in muted tones in Irving Braxiatel's study. Hope, the prince said. Blood, the prince said. Turandot.

As fond of Puccini as Braxiatel was, he had wanted to listen to Glasst's choral works presently. But Glasst was a non-human. When Klarzen had found Braxiatel listening to the Killoran composer Brunvok Falgatch, the officer had burned the recordings. Braxiatel had been forced to watch those pieces of beauty, those irreplaceable historical artefacts, go up in the flames of barbarism.

Unbidden, the words came to Brax in his native language. _Lesser species_. Cardinal Braxiatel, _Chancellor_ Braxiatel of the High Council, coerced and commanded by _lesser species_? They were hardly out of the oceans, only just come down from the trees. The two tiny little helices of their genetics traced back such _brief_ histories. They had no right.

Braxiatel could dematerialise their home planets. He could time loop their populations. He could scoop them out of history and leave them in the Vortex for eternity. Better yet, he could throw them in the Oubliette, make it so they never existed at all. No one would have to be hurt. None of his treasures would have to be destroyed. He could put history back on its path and spare everything important to him, all those people, all that history, and he alone would have to remember. That was his job, wasn't it, his true responsibility? He belonged to Time, and Time was his. It was his moral duty to kill these savages who had dared to deform the history of Braxiatel's home.

 _Lesser species_. What was he thinking? Bernice was human as well. The lack of sleep must have been impairing his cognitive functions. He'd have to avoid showing that.

Sealing in all his fear and pain and anger, he listened to _Turandot_ and tried to ignore everything else. As Braxiatel's grandfather clock kept the time, Marshal Mushtaq Anson sipped tea from Braxiatel's best china cups. "You didn't accept my invitation to Rebecca Hurley's hanging," he was saying, his too-indelicate hands putting the cup back on the desk at which they both sat, a set of paper files before him.

"I don't have a love of barbaric spectacle," Braxiatel replied. _Lesser being. Primitive. Savage._ Instead of Anson's face, Braxiatel was looking at the forced-perspective painting over his shoulder. It showed the Small Trianon—now, revealed under the façade, the temple of the Oracle of the Lost. He had said to the Oracle once, _Time is relative_. This Occupation had been only a year, a breath when thought of as part of all the centuries he had lived out. Less than a breath, even. He had to think of it as that. "Please let's move past these unpleasantries, Marshal Anson. They get so dull. You can skip to the interrogation, and I'll skip to the lecture. I was thinking eighteenth century Gothic literature today. Earth, of course. I know nothing beyond humanity interests you."

"Actually," said the Marshal, getting to his feet and walking past Braxiatel, and now that Brax looked to the Marshal, he realised that as he had not been looking at Anson, neither had Anson's gaze been settled on him. "I was thinking of twenty-fifth century Martian funeral rites." 

Braxiatel knew exactly where Anson was looking. Out another of the paintings that served as a window for a guarded man. Out onto the dirt where an archaeologist's camping site had once been, decades ago. 

Anson said, "It doesn't seem very like you to leave corpses in the earth, Braxiatel."

"If you know anything about Martian funeral rites, then you know that a warrior is buried where he falls."

"How barbaric."

"It's about honour and tradition. Two things about which the Fifth Axis requires quite the extensive education."

"As it happens," said Anson, "I do know a thing or two about Martian funerary rites. There's something wrong with this corpse. Isn't he supposed to have a coin in his mouth? Some superstitious nonsense about paying the Journeyman."

Braxiatel remembered Garshal calling the old Martian rites superstition. He couldn't bear to tell Anson that his opinion was agreed with by the deceased party. "As was once and is still done in many human cultures. Get one of your historians in here if you aren't acquainted with your own kind's beliefs."

"I've already spoken to them. And with some others." Anson walked over to Braxiatel's desk, sitting across from him. He opened up the file and read: "Garshal, deceased 2595 on an archaeological research mission with Irving Braxiatel, Bernice Summerfield, Hayward Denson. And Divson Follett, deceased, Emilia Winston, deceased, Clarence, deceased. Not a particularly fortunate research team.

"I did some further research: according to the records, Garshal was on Dellah prior to its quarantine. It isn't clear how he escaped, as his name wasn't among the four thousand evacuees. He was recorded as being at the Advanced Research Department, and then, suddenly, the next evidence of his existence is his role in your research party. And then I found records of one Commander Skutloid, although he didn't make it off the planet alive, did he? Still, he was returned home for a funeral. Courtesy of one Irving Braxiatel. What a shame that your Martian made it off the planet only to die so soon after. Looking further into things, I discovered that you, Braxiatel, were the Head of Theatrology at St Oscar's University during that terrible event that destroyed that planet. It was you who led the evacuation, was it not? After what the records say was a failed attempt to prevent the madness infecting those people.

"And here you are now." The Marshal looked up from his papers and straight into Braxiatel's eyes. "What terrible luck with planets you have, Braxiatel."

Braxiatel breathed. He was steady, and he was calm, and he was Irving Braxiatel. So he looked right back at Anson, that he might speak with a cold quietness that proved this strike did not hit. "Then it's a shame I don't have a time ship to go back and correct that. Isn't it, Marshal Anson." 

For a moment longer, Anson held his gaze. Braxiatel could see into the mind of this pathetic little man ( _primitive, savage, lesser being_ ) and saw nothing worth fearing. Petty power plays not worthy of the Capitol's most spineless politicians. Small-minded efforts to make his calm crack. _Narvin_ would have aimed the knife better. Darkel had a better eye for making a man suffer. Braxiatel showed no pain, no hate. No weakness. Only disdain and contempt.

"More tea?" Braxiatel offered, and Marshal Anson stood up again, files in hand. He would leave now. Once more, Anson had lost, another angle of interrogation discredited. He would try something different. He would not use Dellah again.

"We'll be burning the body," said the Anson. "It takes up space that could be put much better use." One last effort at making a stab into old wounds. How terribly pathetic.

"If you like," Braxiatel said. "Garshal was never particularly interested in his people's religion. But he did die with honour. Unfortunately, you won't even get that."

"You don't know the future any longer, Braxiatel."

"No one knows the future, Marshal Anson. But all rats die the same way."

Because Braxiatel had not risen to Anson's baiting, Anson could not reply. Turandot sang, _Il gelo che ti dà foco, che cos'è?_ Anson shut the door behind him, but Braxiatel was still not alone, not with all the Axis surveillance around him. He was watched, and trapped, and all he could do was wait.

Even so, he allowed himself quiet laughter. No pain, no fear, no weakness. They could not touch him. Sunken down to the lowest of all temperatures, his hearts would not be moved again.

Now all that was left was to take their futures. He would these lesser beings burn.


End file.
